Sebastien Bigo graduated from the Institut d’Optique Graduate School, France, in 1992. In 1996, he received a PhD degree in physics for a work devoted to all-optical processing and soliton transmission. He joined Nokia Bell Labs (formerly Alcatel Research & Innovation) in 1993, while a student at the University of Besançon, France. In 1997, he started studying high-capacity WDM terrestrial systems, and conducted 30 record transmission experiments, at 10Gbit/s, 40Gbit/s and 100Gbit/s channel rates. He is currently Principal, heading the Optical Networking and optical satellite research. He has authored and co-authored more than 350 journal and conference papers, and 50 patents. He is Bell Labs Fellow, received the General Ferrie award in 2003 from the French ICT society, the IEEE/SEE Brillouin award in 2008 and the Telecom Grand Prix of the French Academy of science.